


twinkle, twinkle (little witch)

by WaifsandStrays



Series: Wishcraft [2]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: M/M, Witch AU, ghosts and demons, kevin is dead ya, sorry - Freeform, spellshop au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 04:19:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16055426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaifsandStrays/pseuds/WaifsandStrays
Summary: In which we learn about the shop's resident specter...Kevin and Aaron have an adventure.





	twinkle, twinkle (little witch)

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this for ages and I'm finally happy with it. The witch AU is consuming me.

_Once upon a time, Kevin had been more. He’d had a pulse, warmth of his own, a mother and a father who weren’t married and didn’t love each other but who had loved him very much. He was a real, living person with plans and ambitions, dreams and hopes and wishes._

_Then, with the flash of a knife, he had none of that. Blackness closed in and the sun didn't come back for many, many years._

***

There were people in the building. Kevin blinked out of his daze and found himself face to face with three witches. Although, Kevin didn’t know how he knew that with such bone deep certainty.

One was tall and dark, purple dyed hair curling across his forehead. The other two were small, short and fair with hair stained brilliantly pink and blue like- like… a sort of sweet? Maybe? Someone he once knew used to eat bags of it, holding clumps out to Kevin with sugar sticky fingers. 

The strangers were sitting cross legged in the middle of the open space, some sort of board with symbols on it across their knees.

“Did you feel that?” the blue haired boy asked. His eyes flickered around the shop, skipping over Kevin like stones. “We pulled it through at least. Even if it won’t manifest.”

“Andrew,” the other one - his mirror image - snapped. “Leave it be. It’ll come out soon enough and we’ll deal with it then. Stop _pulling_.”

The oldest boy, their mentor, Kevin thought, held up his hands for peace. “Twitches. Enough, _Goddess preserve us_ , I can’t take much more.”

Two sets of hazel eyes met and narrowed before the man went down under a flurry of limbs. They weren’t hurting him, Kevin gathered, inching back into the shadows of where he had been. They were… playing.

Laughter rung through the dusty spaces and Kevin slipped quietly away.

***

In the days that passed, Kevin learned more and more about his new roommates. The twins, Andrew and Aaron, were stubborn, immovable by anything except each other. Their cousin, Nicky, was gentle and sweet, humming old forgotten songs as he worked, dancing and weaving light through the crumbling dusty place.

Kevin enjoyed Nicky’s playful antics until a song - sharp, sweet shards of memory catching like a thorn on cloth, tearing through his being - reminded him suddenly of his mother. Then Nicky’s playing was not so fun. Kevin shorted out the radio and faded away to hide downstairs.

It seemed like hours before a little pink head peeked down into the shadows and huffed, “You owe me a new speaker dock!”

Kevin blinked, sunk deeper into the shadows. Surely, Aaron wasn't talking to him. He couldn’t _see_ him. Not truely.

Aaron sighed. “Quit pretending you’re all big and bad. You look like a beanpole.”

Kevin was so shocked by that that he let go of his shadows and manifested two inches from Aaron’s face. To his credit, Aaron only jumped a little. Then a smile, secret as a flower, bloomed at the corner of his mouth, crinkling his eyes.

“Found you.”

***

After that day, Aaron wouldn’t leave him alone. As soon as he unlocked the shop in the morning, he was calling out to Kevin. His magic, a floating thing as soft as a cloud, would pulse through the building until it found whatever shadows Kevin was hiding in and coaxed him out.

Then Aaron would smile and Kevin would be helpless to run away again. He would resign himself to hovering awkwardly in the corner of whatever room Aaron was working in, never speaking but not hiding either.

Aaron, to his credit, took it in stride. He never pressed Kevin to speak nor did he fill the silence with chatter. He was content to let Kevin be and that was more than enough to earn him some trust.

“What are you doing?” Kevin finally asked one day. He winced at the sound of his voice, dusty and shredded. 

Aaron smiled, looking up from his book, and said, “Seeing the future.”

“In a first edition copy of _A Tale of Two Cities_?” Kevin frowned down at the worn pages. “It might tell you the past. Possibly.”

Aaron huffed. “It’s the most important thing to my client, her energy is imprinted on it, so it will guide me to her future.” His face, Kevin noted, was pale as moonbeams. He looked… tired.

“Are you alright?” The question escaped without his permission.

“It’s… difficult. Doing what I do without an anchor.” Aaron set the book aside and picked up a mortar and pestle, adding dried flowers and berries into the stone bowl as he spoke. “Normally, I would ask my brother but… Well, using other people clouds the process, muddies the waters so to speak. Plus it’s hard, me drawing on him like that. It kills his plants usually and that just makes him moody.”

Aaron glanced up at him, golden eyes surrounded by a sea of crushed violets. “I don’t suppose you’d like to try.”

“Me?” Kevin asked, touching his own empty chest. “How can I anchor you? Wouldn’t I just make things cloudy too?”

Something passed over Aaron’s face like a shadow, there and gone, before he smoothed it over. “The dead have a different energy. I can’t see your future.”

‘I have no future,’ Kevin thought bitterly. But he still found himself drifting closer in spite of it and settled behind Aaron’s shoulder. The boy smiled at him, closed his eyes, and Kevin was gone.

They were somewhere else, Kevin realized, some sort of in-between where past and future met like ink bleeding into paper. Aaron was beside him, a corona of soft pink light around his body, watching it all fly by with a practised calm. Kevin felt unmoored and all he was doing was watching.

Gentle fingers curved around his wrist and squeezed. Aaron. He was touching him. Kevin wondered how it was possible but Aaron didn’t seem in a position to give him answers.

He was peering into the whirling abyss of light and sound, lips moving soundlessly. Kevin stayed close, remembering Aaron’s words about getting lost.

Unease pricked up his spine as Kevin glanced around. Something dark, shapeless and void, was hovering nearby, watching them. It seemed… other, not human but still intelligent enough to know that they did not belong here. Its glowing eyes lit on Aaron and suddenly Kevin could sense that it was _hungry_.

Now Kevin wasn’t used to flexing his own supernatural muscle on anything more annoying than the odd imp or sprite that had wandered into the store over the years but this _thing_ was a threat and Kevin did not take kindly to threats.

He used his own meager powers to stretch his frame, make himself look bigger and wider, wrapped in shadows. He didn’t get the feeling the creature was very impressed with him. Well, that was its own fault, underestimating him. Kevin gathered everything he had left and shoved.

The creature flew away from them as if Kevin had suckerpunched it. It struck the wall of colors and exploded into a wriggling mass of slimy shadowy tendrils.

“He’ll be back.” Aaron didn’t sound like himself. His voice was hoarse and his skin was white as paper. Kevin reacted without thinking, slipping his arm around Aaron to hold him up. The small smile Aaron flashed him was worth any embarrassment over the touch. The smile died quickly though.

“He always comes back,” Aaron whispered, eyes far away. Kevin wanted to wake him up, to take them both far away from this awful place.

“Then why do you come back?” Kevin couldn’t help asking. He didn’t think he could come back day after day if something like that was waiting for him.

“Because people need me. And I have a gift.” Aaron shook his head. “Might as well ask someone why they breathe. They have to.”

Kevin didn’t understand but he sensed that asking again would just upset Aaron. He stayed on alert until Aaron called an end to session. A blink later they were back in reality and Aaron was slumped in his seat. His face was grey, his eyes dull, and Kevin felt a pang of worry.

“Are you alright?”

“I’ll be fine,” Aaron whispered. He reached out his hand, let his fingers linger at where Kevin’s wrist should have been. “Are _you_ alright?” Sincerity shown out of him and it took Kevin’s breath away.

“Yeah… I’m amazing.”

**Author's Note:**

> The AU will continue.


End file.
